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Random thoughts on our impending doom and everyday life, courtesy of a Romance Writer who occasionally feels the need to talk like a Sailor.

Wednesday, 13 June 2012

How to take that spanking and come back smiling!

Life is full of
rejection. From the sly little ones, like...

“That’s an interesting shirt you’re wearing.”

“Oh. Nice.”

“Isn’t that cute.”

Through to the big
juicy ones, like...

“You smell weird.”

“Good God, you suck.”

“No. I don’t want to marry you. And stop following me around.”

A man standing a field, waiting for his spanking. Obviously.

Yes. We’ve all
been there. And if you’re of the writerly persuasion in some sense, you live
there all the damn time. Don’t you? Well? Admit it! Yes, you do. Because there’s
always another put down lurking around the corner. You know there is. It's probably even skulking. Let me over share with you now. Please. It’ll
be cathartic for me.

On Saturday a
snappy little short story that I was quite keen on went before a new friend of
mine. A published author. Let’s code name her ‘Dragon Lady’ for the sake of
this re-enactment. She loved the voice. She loved the story. Glowy warmth was a
buzzing inside me but I wasn’t really surprised by her adoration. Everyone it
had gone before previously had liked it too. And then she hit me with this.

Dragon Lady:
There is no emotion in your sex.

Me: WTF?

Dragon Lady: Yes.
Sorry.

I was stunned. No
emotion in the sex? Are you serious? The guy just battled zombies to be with
her! What does a guy have to do to say he cares? I ranted, I raged, I drank
somewhere in the region of four to five Silver Tequila’s with a dash of Guava. Just
enough to give me a crystal clear perspective on the situation. And it did.
Dragon Lady was wrong. So wrong, she couldn’t even see how wrong she was. She
was simply that wrong. Wrongness leached from her. A lot like the black inky goop
in that Florence and the Machine video, the one where she’s at the ice-skating
rink.

My husband nodded
and made all the right noises. (My husband is untold amounts of sublime and I
have no idea how he puts up with me. Case in point.) Eventually, three hours
later, I decided to sit back down in front of the story and actually look for
myself. Vaguely, if you were twisted and wrong, you could perhaps have thought
my super cool hero only battled zombies and climbed the side of the building to
get laid. Perhaps. But not really. Though sorta. So I layered in some stuff.
You could call it emotion, I suppose. It consisted of a bit of a hint here and
there with regards to how he felt about the heroine. Before and after and while
doing the deed. So there, take that Dragon Lady! Mwahaha! Emotion. Done. Feeling
untold amounts of justified I emailed it off and waited with grand impatience.
She loved it! Perfection! We’re best friends! We’re going to try critiquing for
each other more often and we’ll sit together at the Awards dinner at
conference! Huzzah!

Now, let’s look
more closely at the various stages of rejection.

1.WTF?

2.Where did that come from?

3.They’re wrong.

4.Probably jealous of me or something.

5.Yeah, bet they are. Jealous of the genius
inherent in my MS, “Mark the Lonely Goat Herder’s Erotic Self-Adventures”. Based on a true life story and everything!

6.I knew it.

7.But what was this bit that they wrote? That bit
over here?

8.Doesn’t make sense.

9.Or does it?

10.Sh*t.

11.Head meets desk. Damn. They’re right.

12.WTF do I do?

13.Abandon ship. Quick! Stick it under the bed!
Run! Hide!

14.No. Wait. Hang on. Maybe there is hope. Maybe
if I tweak here and there.

15.Work ass off and actually incorporate some of
the criticism.

16.Emerge with shining MS clasped tight in your
hot little hands. All the better for your having opened your mind and been
willing to admit maybe you don’t know everything!

Alright, I’ve gone on long enough.
Critting is hard to give and even harder to take. I don’t think I do either
particularly well. There is much yet to learn. How do you do?

10 comments:

It's all true, hard to take and hard to give. I think it is also about speed. Getting work out there takes a certain turnaround time and where critters are so important to get that objectivity being close to our work removes. I also think putting things in the draw for a while would make many of the issues jump out at us too. I don't however think it would allow opportunity to share the ins and outs of tentacle porn ( isn't there a Japanese erotic woodblock print??)

Apparently tentacle porn has been happing in a rare sub-genre of manga for a while. I don't know. People are threatening to write it. T'would be our artistic duty to check it out. Very odd. I bet there are any number of woodblock prints. We really need to find them.

I like a little crass, but that's me. And this is my blog where I enjoy mouthing off about all sorts of sh*t. (Don't you love the *? Isn't it cute?) Glad you enjoyed it, Cari. And Lego rocks. Always and ever.

And tentacle porn... I'm awfully innocent sometimes. But it cracked me up hugely.

It hurts Valerie, sometimes more than others. I guess the skin does thicken afterall. A friend showed me a review where reading their book was likened to being eviscerated with a spork. Nice, huh? Not everyone is constructive sadly.